The Proof House Part 34

Bardas Loredan, Venart thought. Well, there comes a point when a man's got to believe in something. 'All right,' he said. His hands shook a little as he took the top off the bra.s.s cylinder; he hadn't put the paper back in quite right, and it was jammed. After he'd fumbled with it for a moment or so, the envoy leaned over him, took it from him and drew out the paper without any difficulty. 'Have you got something to write with?' he asked.

'Hm? Oh, yes.' Venart felt in his pockets, then the pouch on his belt. 'At least - yes, here it is.' He found the little writing-set Athli Zeuxis had given him, years ago; pen, inkstone, small knife, all in a dear little cedarwood box. He moistened the stone with a little wine, rubbed up some ink and signed the paper.

When Temrai felt a little better, he gave orders for a large-scale sortie.

'You've changed your tune,' they said to him.

'Yes,' he replied.

The general staff, who'd almost given up hope of being allowed to do anything, weren't too bothered to find out his motivation. They couldn't have cared less if he'd told them he'd changed his mind because he'd been told to do it by special voices that only he could hear; they'd been cleared for action, that was enough.

With both Temrai and Sildocai out of action, overall command pa.s.sed to Peltecai, whose official designation was cavalry marshal; a good man but a worrier, who worried that he worried. Because he was concerned that his tendency to apprehension might result in dithering leading to disaster, he delegated command to a number of other officers, while reserving the right to override any of their orders if he saw fit. He then held a council of war.

This proved inconclusive; the general staff, it seemed to him, were in a reckless mood as a result of the frustrations of the bombardment, so he resolved to be firm and not allow them to rush him into anything. On the other hand, he had nothing concrete of his own in mind, since he'd wisely delegated planning on the tactical level to his lieutenants. Time, meanwhile, was getting on; unless something was decided soon they'd be too late for a daytime operation and be obliged to mount a night attack; Peltecai saw only too clearly the risks of being hustled into such a risky initiative without proper planning or preparation, and therefore made up his mind to attack at once, with all his available forces.

He then addressed the question of what forces were available, and by the time he'd worked out the true implications of the question it was getting on for mid-morning, and the last thing he wanted was to be bounced into fighting a crucial battle in the midday heat, so he nominated one unit in three for garrison duty and told the rest to fall in for the attack.

At this point, a message arrived from Temrai asking what all the delays were in aid of. Fl.u.s.tered, Peltecai sent back a reply saying that they were just on the point of setting off, and rode to the head of the column. Whatever faults he may have had as a commander, lack of individual courage wasn't one of them. He was determined to lead from the front, by example.

This turned out to be unfortunate, because, as the grand cavalry charge came into range of the enemy's weak and uncommitted archers, one of the handful of men shot from the saddle and trampled into an unrecognisable mess by the troop behind was Peltecai. By this point, of course, n.o.body else had a clue what the plan was or how the chain of command was supposed to work. As the plains cavalry crashed headlong into the wall of the enemy's pikes, therefore, they were operating on the default principle of kill as many of them as you can, then go home.

Which worked fine, at least to begin with. Temrai had decided at the start of the war that the only way to deal with the formations of ma.s.sed armoured pikemen they were likely to encounter was a point-blank volley from the horse-archers to break the line, followed by an utterly committed follow-up with scimitars and battle-axes to widen the gaps and cause a panic. Once they'd achieved that, the enemy's close formation and sheer bulk would be their undoing, if anything could defeat them.

At the hundred-yard mark, therefore, the horse-archers pulled ahead of the heavy cavalry and split their column into two lines, peeling off to ride down the face of the pike formations. The volley went home at thirty-five yards, each archer loosing as he rode past the designated point in the line. The hedge of spearheads crumpled in two places, as the dead and dying pikemen swayed and fell against their comrades in the rows behind, tangling and snagging the men around them. As soon as the archers were clear, the heavy cavalry drove into the wounds in the line, their column splitting down the middle as they rode. Penetration was the key; if they could drive deep enough into the ma.s.s of pikemen, they'd be fighting unopposed - at ground level, there simply wasn't room to lower a pike or draw a sword, and the hors.e.m.e.n would cut the lines like a shear cutting sheet steel, using the tension of the material to make the cut possible. Meanwhile the horse-archers would stand off and shoot from as close as they could get into the rest of the line, trying to prompt them to charge and further disrupt their formation; and if they managed to do that, there were the heavy reserves and, if absolutely necessary, the infantry.

They made a very promising start; the front troops punched two deep holes in the line, like bodkinheads puncturing a breastplate. Once they were in, however, they found they had a problem; there wasn't much the enemy could do to them, but their light, sharp scimitars weren't up to the job of shearing Imperial proof. They hammered and bashed until their fine edges were blunt and the muscles of their wrists and forearms were crippled with the shock of resisted force running back up the bone, but it was like bas.h.i.+ng with a hammer on an anvil, which is specifically designed to be bashed. Stalemate.

In a battle, however, stalemate never endures; something always happens, usually through n.o.body's conscious choice. While the heavy cavalry were pounding ineffectually on the anvil, the enemy cavalry (who'd been held back as a reserve; a mistake, as Bardas Loredan later admitted) sprinted up to engage them and ran into the horse-archers, who were pulling out in order to avoid them but mistimed their manoeuvre. In desperation, the archers loosed as much of a volley as they could put together on the fly; in accordance with standing orders, they shot at the horses rather than the men, and were far more successful than either party had antic.i.p.ated. The front rank of Imperial troopers went down in a welter of noise and dust, and the next rank couldn't stop in time; they rode over and through the fallen horses, cras.h.i.+ng like a runaway cart hitting a wall. Startled but greatly encouraged, the horse-archers put up their bows, drew their scimitars and charged, only to find they had the same problem as their colleagues in the heavy cavalry when it came to cutting steel. They'd antic.i.p.ated rolling up the Imperials with the momentum of their charge; instead, they stalled and came to a standstill as they found out the hard way that their chain-mail and cuir-bouilli was enough to stop them getting cut by the four-pound Imperial swords but didn't do much to prevent smashed bones or concussion. At this point the back three troops of Imperials (who'd lagged behind and only just caught up) swept round their flank, cut off their escape and started hacking them down like an overgrown hedge.

The captain of the sixth reserve troop, a man called Iordecai, saw what was happening and led a charge. Through sheer carelessness the Imperials didn't see him coming until it was too late for them to get out of the way. Iordecai's men were one of the few units of lancers in Temrai's army, and they had no trouble at all punching through heavy plate. Their impact s.h.i.+fted the balance of the engagement; the Imperial captain panicked, imagining that he'd been set up for just such an attack, and tried to pull his men out, but they were too deeply engaged to be able to withdraw; instead, they tried to cut their way out through the horse-archers, and made an impressively good job of it. As they broke through the side of the melee, however, they were rammed in flank and rear by another troop of lancers, following up on Iordecai's lead.

At this point the balance of the rearguard, who could see the victory being won by the lancers but not the mess in the pike formation, decided it was time they had their turn; so they charged the pikemen, who were no longer being worried by archers and had had time to recover a little order. When the rearguard (who weren't lancers) drove their charge home, they found the levelled heads of the pikes waiting for them, by which point it was too late to slow down.

Bardas Loredan, on a low hill behind the camp, couldn't see much of the pike formation either, but he had a fine view of the cavalry battle and decided that his only chance of saving the day was to commit his halberdiers against the lancers at the charge and hope they got there in time. They did the best they could, but it was a fairly hopeless venture; by the time they'd skirted the pikemen, the enemy infantrymen had deployed across their line of advance and were manoeuvring to take them in flank. There didn't seem to be anything to be gained by slowing down at this point, so the captain of halberdiers led his column at the double into the centre of the enemy line. The effect was spectacular: they cut the line in half, routing one wing completely. That helped; they were now at liberty to hook the enemy formation and press home the attack on three sides. Their mistake was not spotting the two troops of heavy cavalry that had failed to get into the pike formation and retired to the side of the battle with nothing to do.

There weren't enough of them to cause catastrophic damage, but they carved up a lot of men. The halberdiers had a weak spot, where the pauldrons buckled over the shoulder; a cut across the exposed straps with a sharp blade left them with loose, flapping armour plates hampering their arm movements and the whole of the shoulder and the side of the neck open to attack. Not many killed, but a great many disabled, as the scimitars glanced off the angled sides of the halberdiers' kettle-hats and sliced into neck tendons and collar-bones. Where the halberdiers were able to turn and present arms, they had the better of the deal - the impetus of the oncoming horseman made a far better job of driving the halberd spike through mail and flesh than the human arm could ever do - but on balance the advantage, expressed as the ratio of casualties inflicted, was with the plainsmen.

At this point the battle was out of anybody's control; even with both sides co-operating in a spirit of friends.h.i.+p and goodwill, it would have been a hard job to have disentangled the component parts of the two armies to the point where a general retreat would have been possible. There were only two practical options: to fight it out until one side was wiped out, or to disengage and pull out in the nearest possible approximation to order.

For a while, it looked depressingly like the first option. The plains cavalry wedged into the pikemen were slowly being crushed in from the sides; stuck in the middle of a melee, the lancers no longer had any advantage from impetus or momentum and were mostly blunting their scimitars on the dented and mangled but uncompromised armour of their opponents; enough halberdiers were dead or on the ground to give their colleagues room to turn and start pus.h.i.+ng spikes up into the plainsmen's faces; if the battle continued along this course, sooner or later the Imperials were bound to prevail, and their survivors, probably no more than a few hundred at best, would be left with the field and the monumental task of disposing of the dead.

Instead, the Imperials panicked, which was probably the best thing they could have done in the circ.u.mstances. The catalyst was a furious all-out attack by a young section leader by the name of Samzai on what he mistakenly believed was Bardas Loredan's honour guard (in the event it turned out to be the cavalry escort for a detachment of trumpeters and other musicians; but they were rather splendidly dressed and equipped, and they'd somehow ended up wedged in among the pikemen, so it was an understandable mistake). Samzai didn't make it; he fell swinging his axe - when his body was hauled out of the mess, they found seventeen holes in his mails.h.i.+rt - just one rank short of his objective, but the survivors of his section managed to chop and shear their way through the pikemen and kill enough of the escort to get within arm's length of the musicians, at which point someone started shouting that Bardas Loredan was dead . . . A head (n.o.body ever found out whose) was hoisted up on a pike, and the plainsmen, even the ones being clubbed to death while unable to defend themselves, started to cheer as if something important had just been decided. At first the reaction was just a moment of hesitation, concern that something was going on but n.o.body knew what it was; then the pikemen started to edge backwards, dropping their pikes (where possible) and looking for a way to get out of the press and into open ground. As the main infantry formation wavered and came apart, there was suddenly enough room for the cavalry to move; and a brief over-the-shoulder glimpse at the retreating pikemen was enough to convince the Imperial cavalry that something was badly wrong, prompting them to pull out as well. As the panic gathered momentum, so did the pace of withdrawal; men who'd been walking slowly backwards turned round and started to run, no longer remotely interested in the enemy in any capacity except that of possible obstruction. The battle seemed to come to pieces like a frail wicker basket, scattering its contents everywhere.

Two troops of plains heavy cavalry set off in pursuit of the Imperial pikemen; they were intercepted by an equal number of Imperials, cut to pieces and scattered. After that, there wasn't much enthusiasm for pressing home the advantage, and the plainsmen fell back on the fortress as quickly as they could. As for the Imperials, they calmed down a little when they were told that Bardas Loredan wasn't really dead (by Bardas Loredan himself, riding up to find out what the h.e.l.l had happened) but still kept going till they reached the camp. It's always hard to know how to act when you've just been driven from the field, particularly if the field you've just been driven from is now deserted. Perhaps wisely, Bardas didn't try to make anything of it; he went back to his tent and called for casualty lists and the general staff; he had a lot to do, organising stretcher details and burial details, making sure as many of the wounded as possible at least got within sight of a doctor before they died, posting pickets and seeing to it that the camp was properly secured against follow-up attacks.

It took a full day to retrieve the wounded. Bardas sent a herald to sort out the usual truce, and the officers in charge on both sides reached a sensible understanding whereby each side cleared up its end of the field and handed back the other side's wounded in a reasonable state of repair. It was harder to reach agreement on disposing of the daunting number of dead bodies that needed to be dealt with before they became a health hazard to both parties. Temrai's men had to be cremated, whereas the Imperials needed to be buried, so a reciprocal arrangement was out of the question; Bardas' negotiators suggested taking it in turns - they'd go first, collect their dead and then withdraw while the plainsmen collected theirs - but Temrai's people objected on the grounds that that would mean waiting for at least a day, which wouldn't be advisable if the sun decided to come out; instead they proposed having retrieval details working side by side, but the Imperials weren't having that - too much risk of an incident, they said, tempers flaring, fights breaking out; instead, why not divide the field as before and each side make two piles, ours and theirs? Time was getting on, and Temrai's people reluctantly agreed, but the deal nearly foundered on where the line across the field was to be drawn - more people had died on both sides up at Bardas' end of the field, and his negotiators felt they were ending up with the rough end of the bargain, so they suggested splitting the field lengthways instead of down the middle. The plainsmen refused, but agreed to bring up the dividing line by a hundred and fifty yards, so that they took responsibility for most of the bodies from the cavalry actions, while the Imperials cleared up after the fighting around the pike formation. When the deal had been done and the work details were lining up, one of Bardas' men remarked to his opposite number on Temrai's negotiating team that whereas during the battle they'd been fighting to get as much of the field as possible, now they were struggling to give as much of it as they could away. The plainsman thought this remark in poor taste and lodged a formal complaint, which was ignored.

After the field had been cleared, the bodies removed, as much in the way of armour, arrows, horses and weapons as possible scavenged for salvage, it was finally possible to work out the score and announce the winner. It turned out to be a remarkably close thing. Purely on head-count of men killed, Temrai had lost; on percentages of total forces engaged killed, he had a marginal advantage. Broken down between cavalry and infantry, a.s.suming cavalry to be worth more, Bardas had a slight lead, but the basis of accounting was dubious there, since heavy infantry were more useful to him than cavalry, and he'd lost rather more of them than Temrai had; besides which, properly speaking, at least three quarters of Temrai's army were theoretically cavalry, which made a nonsense of the whole calculation. Since the battle hadn't been about territory, and neither side had gained or lost an inch, that wasn't much use as a criterion of success. The last accepted category, objectives achieved, was equally unhelpful, since (when they came to think of it) n.o.body could clearly define what either side's objectives had been, or whether they'd had any at all; if there were any, n.o.body had achieved them, which meant that both sides had lost, which was plainly ridiculous.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

'For pity's sake,' Venart shouted, 'will you stop that G.o.dawful noise?'

The hammering stopped. 'What did you say?'

Venart took a step forward. It was dark and gloomy inside the workshop, the only light coming from the shrouded furnace. 'I said, will you stop-Can't you keep the noise down? I'm trying to work.'

Posc Dousor, the Auzeils' next-door neighbour, stepped out from behind the furnace door. He was wearing a leather ap.r.o.n and holding a big hammer. 'So am I,' he said.

'What?'

Dousor nodded towards the furnace and the anvil that stood near it. 'You don't think I'm doing this for fun, do you?' he said.

Venart took a step inside and peered round. 'Excuse me asking,' he said, 'but just what are you doing? Last time I was in here, this was a cheese store.'

'Well, now it's an armour factory.' Dousor wiped his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. 'On account of I can't get any cheese to sell, but I do have this stock of steel billets I got landed with twelve years ago for a bad debt, and suddenly everybody wants to buy armour. So,' he added, 'I'm going to make some. All right?'

'I see,' Venart replied. 'I didn't know you knew how to make armour.'

Dousor frowned. 'I don't,' he said. 'But soon I will. After all, it can't be difficult, can it? You get the metal red hot, you bash it with a hammer till it's thin, then you bash it some more till it's the shape you want. And anyway,' he added, 'I bought a book. If you've got a book, you can learn anything.'

'Well-' Venart wasn't quite sure what to say. It was a very big hammer, and Dousor was rather short-tempered. 'That's very enterprising of you, Posc, but do you think you could possibly do it somewhere else? Only I was up all night doing Council minutes, and-'

'Where?'

'Sorry?'

Dousor waggled the hammer impatiently. 'Where do you suggest?' he said. 'Out in the street, maybe? Or perhaps I should sling out all my furniture, lug this b.l.o.o.d.y anvil indoors and turn my front room into a smithy. Well?'

Venart's head wasn't getting any better. 'Look,' he said, 'I really don't mind what you do so long as you keep the noise down a bit. I do have a lot of rather important-'

'Keep the noise down a bit,' Dousor repeated. 'You mean, bash a bit more gently? Just sort of pat the b.l.o.o.d.y great iron bars into flat sheets? Don't be a prawn, Ven. Besides, you ought to be grateful.'

'Sorry?'

'War effort,' Dousor said. 'Munitions. Doing my bit for freedom and our unique cultural heritage. Doesn't look particularly brilliant, does it, the First Citizen obstructing the war effort because of some trifling personal inconvenience?'

Venart thought for a moment. 'Listen,' he said. 'What if I were to find you a nice workshop you could use - down on the Drutz, say, in one of the old bonded warehouses? You could bash away to your heart's content down there and I don't suppose anybody'd even notice.'

Dousor frowned. 'What, and pay you b.u.g.g.e.rs rent when I've got a perfectly good shop of my own? Do I look like I'm stupid?'

'All right then, rent-free. Come on, Posc, it's driving Triz up the wall.'

Dousor shook his head. 'I can't help that,' he said. 'It's taken me days to lick this place into shape, put in all these fixtures and stuff. And now you want me to rip them all out again, hump all this heavy gear halfway across the Island-'

''I'll send someone to help you,' Venart sighed. 'At my expense, naturally,' he added.

'But there's still inconvenience,' Dousor persisted. 'Time lost travelling to and fro, haulage charges-'

'How much?'

'What was that?'

'How much do you want me to pay you,' Venart said slowly, 'to move all your gear over to the Drutz and leave us in peace? That's what you're getting at, isn't it?'

Dousor's brow furrowed. 'That's actually a rather offensive thing to say, Ven,' he replied. 'We've been neighbours for years, since your father was alive. Actually, I always thought we were friends. But now you're First Citizen, of course, you think you can come barging in here giving orders-'

'Twenty-five? Fifty?'

Dousor laughed. 'Do me a favour,' he said. 'There's also lost production time to consider. This window of opportunity isn't going to last for ever, you know. Pretty soon this soldiering craze is going to wear off, and if I don't get up and running pretty d.a.m.n quick, I'm going to look round and see I've missed the boat. And now you're telling me to drop everything-'

'A hundred and seventy-five.'

'No way,' Dousor said. 'No way I'm even going to consider it for less than three-two-five.'

'Three-two-five? You must be-'

By way of replying, Dousor picked up the hammer and started laying into the bloom of iron on the anvil; it had long since gone cold, but he didn't seem to have noticed that. Before Venart had a chance to make himself heard again over the noise, his sister pushed past him, swept into the shop and grabbed Dousor by the wrist.

'You,' she said. 'Pack it in.'

Dousor looked at her.

'Don't start,' she said. 'I've got a splitting headache thanks to you and your incessant banging. It's got to stop, understood?'

Presumably Dousor intended to explain, as he'd explained to Venart, about the war effort and his patriotic duty. But he didn't, possibly because with her other hand Vetriz had picked up the pincers, the jaws of which were red hot on account of being carelessly left in the fire, and was holding them about an inch under Dousor's beard.

'All right,' he said. 'Just as soon as your brother and I work out the compensation.'

Vetriz stared him in the eye. 'It's all right,' she said quietly, 'we don't want any compensation. Now start packing up all your silly tools and things, while Ven sends out for the carrier's cart.'

After that, there were no more loud noises from next door, and Venart was able to get back to work. Even without the ring of hammer on steel, it wasn't easy to keep his concentration; the revised heads of agreement from the provincial office were couched in such ambivalent terms that they could mean anything, nothing, or both simultaneously.

'You're going to have to tell someone about this,' Vetriz said. 'Tell him, Athli. You can't make a peace treaty with the enemy and not tell anybody.'

'I've told the Council,' Venart replied irritably. 'And the s.h.i.+p-Owners', and the Guild. Who does that leave, really?'

'You've told the bigwigs,' Athli pointed out, 'and made them promise to keep it to themselves. That's not the same thing at all.'

'You think they can keep a secret? Come off it.' Venart allowed himself a small, weary smile. 'Telling Ranvaut Votz something and making him promise not to repeat it is the most efficient means of disseminating information the world has ever seen. I expect they know about it in Colleon by now.'

'All right,' Athli said. 'But you haven't told us. Which means that everybody's rus.h.i.+ng around in a panic, not knowing what's going on. You know what Eseutz Mesatges did when she heard the news? She went out and bought up fifteen crates of swords and a dozen barrels of armour parts, on the basis that when all the swords and armour are confiscated, the government's going to have to pay compensation, and she's figuring that the difference between market value and a.s.sessed value's going to be a substantial profit. You can't let people carry on like that, there'll be chaos.'

Venart blinked, then said, 'I'm not responsible for the way people like your friend Eseutz choose to behave. I just want to keep the lid on things till we've had a chance to lick these b.l.o.o.d.y terms and conditions into shape; and I don't want to do that yet, for obvious reasons.'

'Obvious to you perhaps,' Vetriz said. 'Enlighten me.'

'Simple.' Venart put the parchment down, and it rolled itself back up into a tube. 'If I can spin things out till Bardas Loredan finishes with Temrai, then we'll be talking to him and not some devious b.a.s.t.a.r.d of a Son of Heaven. Well? Can you think of a better way of handling it, because if so I'd love to hear it. Playing diplomatic chess with these people is way above my head, but unless we can put up some sort of a show, we're in deep, deep trouble. Or didn't you read that extradition clause?'

Neither Vetriz nor Athli seemed to have anything to say; the name Bardas Loredan had somehow put them off their stride.

'I'll take that as agreement then, shall I?' Venart said. 'Although since when I had to get your approval for acts of state I'm not entirely sure. It's bad enough trying to keep Votz and that lunatic from the Guild off the premises without you two ganging up on me as well.'

Athli seemed to pull herself back from an entirely different train of thought. 'All right,' she said. 'But really, Ven, trying to win a cleverness match with the provincial office isn't very - well, clever. You're playing on their side of the court.'

Venart nodded. 'Yes,' he said, 'but at least I know that. Remember what Father used to tell us, Triz? Properly handled, the other man's strength can be his greatest weakness? They know perfectly well they've got me completely muddled and confused; what I've got to do is find a way of staying muddled and confused long enough for Bardas Loredan to win his d.a.m.ned war. Look at it from that perspective, and I think you'll see what I mean.'

Athli stood up. 'I hope you know what you're doing,' she said. 'Remember, this is politics, not a sardine deal.'

Venart groaned. 'I know,' he said. 'And I'm well aware that I'm out of my depth, haven't got a clue what I'm doing and shouldn't be trusted with running a whelk stall, let alone a government. Just because something's true doesn't always mean it's helpful.'

Athli put a hand on his shoulder, then walked out across the courtyard to the small room she was using as an office. Not that there was much to do; business was at a standstill, she had no means of communicating with head office in Shastel, and nothing to tell them even if she had been able to get a message through. It was all rather depressing; everything she'd achieved by luck, hard work and native ability had somehow managed to melt and drip out between her fingers.

Maybe-People were leaving the Island, she knew that. At first they'd been circ.u.mspect about it; they'd announced their intentions of going off to buy food, loaded everything they could aboard their s.h.i.+ps, slipped out of the Drutz in the early morning and not come back. Now they weren't even bothering to lie. Looked at from a more rational perspective, it was remarkable that so few, relatively speaking, had done the sensible thing - of course it had been the same in Perimadeia, except that only a few hopeless pessimists had really believed the City would fall. She'd been one of them; and now it was time to go again, without shame or regret, taking with her any of her friends who chose to come with her, as calmly and sensibly as (say) Niessa Loredan abandoning Scona . . .

It was true to say (she decided, reviewing the facts like a historian) that once upon a time she'd cared about Bardas Loredan; cared a lot. Loved? Sloppy, imprecise term. She'd worked with him, done what she could to keep him in one piece when the horrors of his trade started to get to him, been there for him, worried herself sick every time he'd stepped out on to the courtroom floor but never once shown it - always so confident that she knew and understood him, the way n.o.body else did. Now it was true to say that she didn't love him, although that didn't stop her thinking about him all the time - but that had been then and there, this was now and here, and she'd carried his luck this far, to this conclusion. She'd always known, somehow, that as long as she cared for him he would survive. It was as if she'd been keeping his life safe for him, in a stout steel-banded locked wooden box, while his body went out and did violent, irrevocable things to the world. After all, she was a banker; he'd deposited his life, his luck with her, made it her responsibility. She'd carried it safely out of Perimadeia, guarded it for him while he tried to make something of his life on Scona, been entrusted with his apprentice and his sword; she'd taken it from him again when he'd lost his last hopes and dreams in the Mesoge, and sent her away. Well; and now he was coming to the Island, where she'd set up in business on her own account as a taker of deposits and creator of opportunities. Time to hand it back, to render her accounts and be discharged; to leave it for him here, in the condition he would expect to find it, paid up, balanced and signed off, and then to go away.

Some clients are more trouble than they're worth.

Which only left the question: what should she take with her? To which question, the answer was simple. Her writing-desk and counting-board, a few changes of clothes, a small case of books and all the ready cash she could put together in the time available.

Vetriz soon got bored watching her brother fretting over his paperwork and went to her room.

It was a nice room. She had a comfortable bed, a rather grand and melodramatic chair with big carved arms and legs, a rosewood dressing table inlaid with lapis and mother of pearl (she'd bought it in Colleon and made Venart find s.p.a.ce for it on the s.h.i.+p, much to his disgust; it meant throwing a whole barrel of sun-dried herrings over the side to make room), an ivory and bra.s.s mirror that gave her skin a wonderfully flattering golden tone, three chests full of clothes, a silver lamp on a turned sycamore stand that was as tall as she was, a rack for her seven pairs of shoes, a book-box, with padlock, a small stool with an embroidered seat, two genuine Shastel tapestries (one of them thought to be a School-of-Mavaut, but the other one was much nicer to look at), a writing desk and a chequer-board that doubled as a chessboard, with a set of attractively carved chessmen (horn and bone), an embossed bra.s.s water jug all the way from Ap' Elipha (a present from her father when she was six and really wanted a doll's house) - all nice things, solid things to define her life with. She had a polished marble floor (cold underfoot on winter mornings but beautifully cool in summer; sometimes she slept on it when it was really hot) and a view over the courtyard.

And that was about it.

She lay down on the bed. There was a headache gathering behind her eyes which a short nap might dissipate. She snuggled her head into the pillow and - - 'h.e.l.lo,' she said. 'I didn't expect to see you so soon.'

'I'm not here yet,' he replied.

'Ah.' She looked at him carefully. He looked older - well, that was only to be expected, he was older - but otherwise pretty much the same. For some reason he was dressed as a fencer, the way he'd been when she first set eyes on him in the courtroom in Perimadeia; in fact, that's exactly where he was, standing in the middle of the black and white tiled floor, like a counter on a counting-board, a reckoning piece. She wondered how much he stood for.

'How are things with you, anyway?' he asked.

'Oh, not so bad,' she replied automatically. She realised that she was standing in the middle too; she was standing a sword's length away from him, and the needle-sharp point of his vintage Spe Bref law-sword was just under her chin. If the black lines are whole units, she thought idly, then I'm a ten and he's only a five. No, that can't be right. 'What's going on?' she asked.

'A trial,' he replied; and they were standing on opposite sides of a workbench, in a dark, rather damp-smelling thatched workshop. On the bench between them was a bow - what they called a composite, if she'd got that right, the sort that's made out of sinew and horn and bone and things like that, held together with glue boiled down from skin and blood. It was fixed in some sort of wooden clamp, with a notched bar set in the middle at right angles.

'It's called a tiller,' he explained. 'It's for applying stress and tension. Now then, let's see how far this beggar'll bend before it breaks.'

- And they were in a cellar, with a high ceiling and stone floors, standing beside a pile of pieces of armour, body parts. 'A trial,' he went on, 'which is another way of saying, a putting to proof.' Gently, almost tenderly, he took her hand in his and laid it softly on the anvil. 'This may sting a bit,' he warned her, as he raised the big hammer.